How To Be A Super Mom in 5 Easy Steps
by Narwhals Forever
Summary: Cass Hamada calls an old friend for advice on raising a superhero.
1. Chapter 1

Hello readers!

I don't own Big Hero 6 or the Incredible-oh, you guys know the rest.

I was inspired from the idea of Helen Parr from the Incredibles and Cass Hamada from Big Hero 6 being friends from a fanfic by Wings of Sanguine titled "We Could Be Immortals." You guys should go read it, I thought it was neat. Anyway, I did not copy that fic in any way, I just used the idea of Cass and Helen being friends as a background for this little two-shot.

Anyway, quick note- this story takes place eight years after the Incredibles left off and one month after the events of Big Hero 6. The way I see it, Vi is about 15, Dash around 10, and Jack-Jack 1 1/2 or 2 during the events of the Incredibles. So, Violet was born the year that the Anti-Hero Act was passed, Dash born five years after her, and Jack-Jack eight years after him. I think that Tadashi would have been born the same year as Dash, meaning Hiro is five years younger than either Dash or Tadashi. The car crash that killed Hiro and Tadashi's parents would probably have happened when Tadashi was eight and Hiro was three, so Tadashi and Hiro started to live with Aunt Cass the year that Jack-Jack was born. Meaning...(does calculations) Dash and Tadashi were nineteen when Big Hero 6 starts, Violet was 23, and Jack-Jack was eleven.

Nice and confused yet?

I'm kidding. Anyway, enjoy this little fic and let me know what you think!

Toodles!

Narwhals Forever

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><p>Spontaneous phone calls weren't exactly a rarity (E kept her busy with plenty of them) but Helen was nonetheless a bit surprised when she was woken from a rather pleasant dream by the loud ringing of the phone in her ear.<p>

Rolling off the couch in shock, Helen stumbled over to the coffee table where the phone had been resting and fumbled with it, finally holding it still so that she could clumsily read the caller ID.

"California?" She muttered to herself, reading the area code. "Who do I know that lives in…" she pressed the green button and lifted it to her ear."Hello?"

"Helen?"

Helen almost dropped the phone. "Cassandra?" She asked in startled surprise. She quickly got up off the floor. "What? What happened? Did something bad happen?"

Helen and Cassandra Hamada went way back, all the way to the third grade. Helen had asked Cass to help her with a class project. Helen had accidentally reached too far, screaming in shock when her arm had stretched like silly putty over the table. Cass, surprised but relatively calm, had helped Helen bunch up the arm like a hose and dump it in the washing machine, hoping to shrink it to a normal size. They were interrupted by Helen's mom, who stopped them and explained to both of them that some children had different abilities than others, which was fine, but needed to be kept a secret to protect Helen's identity. Oddly, the usually energetic, imaginative Cass understood and promised to keep Helen's powers a secret, a promise she had kept faithfully through all these years.

For the longest time after that, Helen and Cass were inseperable.

Sleepovers, hour-long conversations about everything from hot wings to the color blue, giggling over crushes, telling their deepest, darkest secrets to each other, the two were practically sisters.

Helen confided in Cass about her aspirations to make a difference in the world, to use her special powers to help people.

Cass told Helen about her ambitions to become a professional pastry chef, wanting her creativity and love of cooking to become her career despite her family's long tradition of becoming engineers or technology professors.

They supported each other always, sticking together like glue.

Until high school graduation, when they had tearfully parted ways. Cass went to college in San Fransokyo, all the way across the country, taking culinary and private business classes and living with her brother's family. Helen (along with their mutual guy friend Dug) joined the air force, Helen later returning and becoming a part-time superhero in their hometown of.

Cass had made Helen and Bob's wedding cake. Cass had listened patiently to Helen's worries and woes about life undercover after the Anti-Hero Act was passed. Cass had sympathized when Helen grew suspicious about Bob's new job, celebrated when the Parr family saved the city and got the Anti-Hero Act lifted.

Likewise, Helen had been excited for her when Cass opened up her own café, and cried with her when a car accident killed her brother and sister-in-law, leaving Cass the single guardian of two young nephews just shy of her twenty-second birthday.

They had both wanted to see each other sometime in the past sixteen years or so, but sadly, the expenses of a private business and two young nephews made it difficult for Cass to make ends meet, similarly to Helen, who had to support three children and multiple relocations on a mediocre-at-best insurance agent's salary. So the years passed, on and on, without much word from the other.

Then, a mere seven months ago, Helen had received a chilling phone call in the middle of the night from a hysterical Cass, sobbing that her oldest nephew, Tadashi, had been killed in a fire at his university. Helen had cried with Cass, her heart aching for her friend's loss.

Dash was eighteen, almost nineteen when Tadashi had died. They were almost the same age.

Helen had sent flowers and a sympathy card, but herowork prevented her from coming and giving her condolences in person. Helen submitted herself to being the shoulder to cry on through the phone, giving Cass advice on how to keep it together while she's still grieving, how to handle her youngest nephew Hiro (who was showing signs of depression after his brother's death) and even sending some money to help cover the cost of Tadashi's funeral.

But hearing her usually bubbly, excitable friend in such a state of mourning and unsureness of what to do next rattled Helen. True, her line of work had toughened her up, but the rare yet horrifying events like this one shook Helen to her very core.

Which is why this phone call made Helen cripplingly afraid of what Cass was about to say. _Don't say something just as horrible happened, _Helen thought, _don't say your café burned down or your business went under or there was an earthquake and good GOD, don't tell me that something happened to Hiro._

"No, no, nothing bad happened!" Cass cried. Helen noted with relief that her voice was its normal, happy-go-lucky tone. "No! Well...not really. I was actually hoping I could ask you about something."

"Sure, sure, yeah." Helen said. Jack-Jack, now eleven, appeared in the doorway, holding a soccerball under his arm. While having significantly more hair than he did when he was a baby, it still stuck straight up into the air, like perfectly pointed spikes of grass growing off his head.

"Mom? Are you okay?" Jack-Jack asked.

Helen waved him impatiently aside, mouthing the words,_ I'm fine, I'm fine, go play_. Jack-Jack, taking the hint, shrugged and ran back outside, kicking the ball out in front of him in the summer sun.

Running a hand through her hair, Helen asked, "So…what is it you wanted to ask me?"


	2. Chapter 2

"Uuummm…" Cass hesitated. Helen heard the phone shift and a spatula scraping against the sides of a bowl, suggesting that Cass was mixing up some kind of treat while holding the phone between her ear and shoulder. Helen smirked. Cass had always been a multi-tasker.

"Well, so I know you know my younger nephew, right? So…oops!" The sound of a bowl clattering to the ground and some shuffling as Cass bent down to pick it up. Helen chuckled. Cass had always been not very good at multi-tasking either.

"Yeahhh… dropped my cake batter," Cass explained sheepishly. "It sucks too, I just got this shirt…"

The sound of water running into a sink basin, followed by a scrubbing sound.

"I'm gonna get that with some stain remover," Cass muttered to herself before remembering that she was talking on the phone. "Oh yeah, hey! So anywaaayyy…my younger nephew Hiro, you know? Before you ask, he's okay," Cass said quickly. Helen shut her mouth. "He's okay now. For the most part. But something's been going on with him and a couple of his friends…I mean, he and they and Baymax, Baymax is his robot, by the way…they all go out and don't usually come back until late, and they spend a lot of time making these cool like, robot things, and they sometimes have weird bruises and stuff…and they really look like those new super heroes we have here now. Have you heard of the Big Hero 6?"

Helen had. As a superhero herself, she had to pay attention to what was going on in the super community, and what information that hadn't been shared through the papers and TV she had learned through word of mouth from other superheroes and Dick Blicker himself. From what she could tell, they were a new team of six individuals, one that she wasn't sure if it was a robot or some really big guy in a mask, a weird fire-breathing monster thing, and four others that looked to be at oldest college kids.

They were inexperienced, having only existed about a month or so, but they were responsible for bringing down a Professor David Callaghan, aka Yokai, who had tried to destroy a tech institute and kill Alistair Krei with stolen microbots. You could say what you wanted, but working as a super team was no easy feat, as Helen would tell you. When her own team took down Syndrome (my gosh, was that eight years ago now?) they had an advantage, being a family…they had known each other for such a long time that working off of each other and making quick decisions was second nature for them- they could work together without having to think about it very much. With the Big Hero 6, they didn't have that advantage and yet were still able to take down the villain on their first mission. Helen couldn't help but be impressed.

"Yeah, they're totally Big Hero 6. I can recognize my nephew anywhere. Anywhere," Cass repeated, as if she thought Helen was going to object. "Besides, who else has a giant inflatable robot?"

So it is a robot, Helen thought briefly.

"And Hiro hasn't come up and told me about it yet, but I know. And…" Cass's voice dropped slightly. "I'm worried, 'Lennie. I mean, being the single mom of a prodigy is hard as it is, but now a superhero? That's why I'm coming to you, Helen. You've been the mom of three superheroes for like, seven or eight years now. You've got to help me out on this one. I don't know what to do. Plus, I've gained like three pounds from the stress eating."

Helen hesitated. "You want…you want me to tell you how to be the mom of a superhero?" She asked incredulously.

"Yes." Cass replied bluntly.

Getting up off the floor, Helen paced the room nervously, trying to think of what to say. Of course, almost two decades of being a mom had made her pretty darn good at it, but at times even she didn't know what the heck she was doing. Looking up at the ceiling, Helen ran her fingers through her hair. "And you're sure that they're the team?"

"Yeah, of course," Cass replied, sounding slightly annoyed. "It's not just paranoid mom syndrome, okay? I'm positive."

"And you're sure you want him doing this?" Helen asked cautiously. "I mean, herowork can be really dangerous. Bad guys…they aren't going to hold back, and someone could get seriously hurt. They will kill them if they get the chance." Helen swallowed. "If you have any doubts about this, you had better pull him out of it now."

Cass shook her head. "No, 'Lennie, I know it's dangerous but…but it's doing him good, you know? Helping people, it's giving him a purpose. It's making him better. I can't take that away from him, 'Len, I-I just can't."

Helen nodded understandingly. Helping people had given her a purpose too. That's why she was a superhero.

She licked her lips, unsure of where to begin. "Okay. You might want to write this down," she warned.

There was the sound of a violently opening drawer, followed by rummaging noises and the sound of a screwdriver or something clattering to the floor. "Okay," Cass said brightly, "shoot!"

"Alright." Helen walked into the kitchen, leaning easily on the counter. "So, I guess the first rule of being a superhero mom is not to panic. I mean, there are times when you want to, but you can't let freaking out get in the way of thinking things through. Trust me," Helen added darkly, thinking of when their jet had exploded and sent her, Dash, and Vi stranded in the middle of the ocean, "Not letting panic get in the way of thinking is really important."

"Mm-hmm." Cass scribbled the note on the pad of paper. "Step 1…don't panic," she mumbled, drawing a heart over the "i"s through force of habit.

"Then, um…step 2 is to communicate. Always know what's going on. Talk to them and make sure they know that they can talk to you."

Cass scribbled_ Step 2. Communication is key_ on her notepad. "But…but what if they're in over their heads or something? Should I get involved?"

Helen shook her head. "Well, you have to trust their judgement. They surprise you with how smart and brave they can be," Helen said, proudly thinking of her own kids, "and you have to trust them to make the right decisions. But if you are really worried or know they're in over their heads or something, call the police. Or backup."

"Backup?" Cass asked as she finished writing _Step 4. Call backup when necessary_, just below _Step 3. Trust their judgement._

"Yeah. Hold on a sec," Helen said, reaching for the Parr's contact book by the fridge.

Cass patiently copied down the names and numbers of every superhero Bob and Helen knew (with Helen omitting the supers' secret identities of course…besides, she knew Cass would never betray any of them).

"…7863." Helen finished.

"And that was Frozone's number, right?" Cass made sure.

"Yep." Helen said. "Oh, and um…one more thing. About being the mom of a superhero."

"Yeah?" Cass asked, pencil poised.

"Well…you have to remember that being a super is not easy," Helen said. "And you have to let them know that it's not all fun and games. It's scary and hard and dangerous, and it can be rough to go through, too. You have to be supportive and patient with them too."

"Basically, just be a mom," Cass reasoned.

Helen smiled. "Yeah." She added, "Oh, yeah. If somebody's giving them a hard time and you get the chance, don't be afraid to kick their butt either."

Cass laughed. "Gotcha!"

She wrote down, _Step 5. Be a kickbutt mom!_

"'Len, thank you so much!" Cass said into the phone. "This is going to help me, like, so much. You are my BFF!"

Helen giggled too…it was like they were in high school again. "You know," Helen said, "Now that Vi and Dash are in college, we have two spare bedrooms. I'm thinking you guys come to our place for a weekend…you take Vi's room, Hiro gets Dash's."

Cass squealed. "We need to make this happen!" She shouted into the phone excitedly.

Another voice joined into the background of Cass's excited squeeing. "Aunt Cass?" A boy's voice asked. "Who are you talking to?"

"Hiro?" Helen heard the frantic rustling of papers as Cass tried to hide the cheat sheet. "NOTHING!" Cass shouted, "I'M NOT TALKING TO ANYBODY! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?" Quietly, Cass whispered, "Thanks Helen. Talk to you later."

"Bye-" Helen said as Cass hung up.

She smiled to herself. Maybe she should write a book… _How to Be A Super Mom in 5 Easy Steps._


End file.
